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Three Strategies to Turn Your Meetings into More Productive Opportunities for Everyone Involved

Posted March 29, 2018

Meetings are expensive – often taking skilled professionals away from essential patient care duties. You need to achieve a meaningful return on this investment of people’s time, energy and talents.

Follow these tips to shift your company culture away from ineffective meetings to increased productivity, streamlined business processes, and enhanced staff engagement.

It’s about time! So, use it well.

Time is money. Planning ahead and sticking to a set time frame is a must.

Set an agenda and send it out in advance. This gives people a heads up about what will be covered in a meeting so they can arrive prepared. Assign and enforce time limitations for all speakers.

Start on time. If you don’t, then chances are you won’t end on time, either. This throws off the rest of the day for everyone involved. Make this part of your business culture: it sends the message that you respect and value people’s time.

If a discussion goes off topic, but it’s worthwhile nonetheless, table it. Make a commitment to revisit it at a later time.

A meeting should be as long or short as necessary. If you’re good about setting and sticking to an agenda, this will And, if you envision a meeting taking an hour and you get through your agenda in 30 minutes, great!

Teach communication skills. Staff training in communication and active listening can pay off on many levels. This includes people expressing themselves clearly and confidently, as well as respecting the time of others by not interrupting or veering off course during meetings.

Get it right in terms of who attends meetings.

Make sure the right people are in the right meetings, for the right reasons. Put careful thought into meeting rosters to ensure that everyone in the room has a clear role and purpose.

Could anyone’s skills and time be better used elsewhere? If so, they shouldn’t be at the meeting table. The average employee spends six to seven hours a week in meetings. Unless this time is warranted, they may be forced to do their most important work on the margins of their days. Long term, this can lead to burnout and attrition issues.

Often, smaller is better. A group of just four or five people may be more likely to zero in on core issues and leave unrelated topics for another time.

Finish strong!

Never end a meeting without a clear agreement on next steps. Before you adjourn, recap all follow-up actions and assign them to appropriate owners.

Make sure each attendee understands what they are accountable for and that they have the authority to complete the tasks assigned to them. This may not mean they have to complete every specific step themselves. For instance, they may need to follow up on an assignment with another person or department. But, they must take responsibility for their action items and accept related deadlines.

Follow up. If you fail to do this, you could wind up having yet another meeting to talk about the same thing.

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